the chronic what

the chronicles of narnia (adamson, 2005) isn’t disney’s only attempt to make the children of the world pay for their own indoctrination into the ideology du jour, but it is among the least compelling. the dour kids in the film flee blitz era london (the costume department’s excuse rock the frump like rotten banana republic refugees) and are inturned in the back of a wardrobe called narnia (the costume department’s excuse to rock uniforms from medieval tymes.) tilda swinton, who seems to have acquired a taste for paychecks when she became pregnant, wanders around the wardrobe as the white witch, sporting dreadlocks and vintage visigoth regalia.

sure, it’s the wrong time for a christian allegory, what with pat robertson acting like bush’s assassination advisor and monastic phonesex freaks like bill oreilly putting the christ back in christmas. nevertheless the film’s real ideological work isn’t promoting the use of jesus christ as our personal savior, rather it’s instilling the assumption that we can’t run away from war. what do the kids find in the wardrobe? a battle between a sentimental lion and a castrating bitch. at least it’s a cool war with knights and centaurs, and one the kids can win, unlike the blitz, which is just drab and scary.